New research from Nigeria shows how virgin coconut oil can have protective health benefits due to its high amounts of antioxidants. One study looked at the effect of virgin coconut oil when supplemented in a diet high in consumption of heated vegetable oils, and how virgin coconut oil protected the liver and kidneys, and the other study looked at how virgin coconut oil can reverse the free radical damage done by cancer chemotherapy drugs.
Virgin coconut oil, depending on how it is processed, is much higher in antioxidants than refined mass-produced coconut oils.
It is not surprising that scientists and researchers in Africa are exploring the benefits of coconut oil, which is native to many tropical African countries, after being deceived for many years by western thinking that coconut oil is harmful due to it being a highly saturated fat.

Companies selling coconut oil in California are finding out the hard way that they cannot claim that coconut oil is "healthy" because the FDA does not allow such a claim, even if scientific studies back up this claim, along with hundreds of thousands of customer testimonials about the health benefits of coconut oil.
Several companies are now fighting class action lawsuits for the sale of their brand of coconut oil in California, including Nutiva, Nature’s Way, BetterBody, Carrington Farms, All Market’s (Vita brand), Costco (Kirkland label), and others.
The people who are bringing these lawsuits are stating that these companies are violating FDA regulations by indicating that coconut oil is healthy when the FDA says this claim cannot be made.
The foundational premise upon which the cases have been built, rests on the belief that coconut oil is saturated fat, and therefore it is unhealthy. Their attorneys are claiming that their clients were misled and deceived by the information on coconut oil labels.
The belief that saturated fats are not healthy is based on the now debunked lipid theory of heart disease, which states that consumption of saturated fats leads to elevated levels of cholesterol, which leads to an increase in heart disease.
Ancel Keyes was the original researcher to put forward this theory, which was later adopted by Congress as part of USDA dietary advice, and his research has been completely discredited.
In fact, the science actually points to the opposite, that people with high levels of cholesterol actually live longer than those with low cholesterol.
However, If the FDA believes that saturated fat is unhealthy, then it will not allow a product that contains more than 1 gram of saturated fat per serving to be called healthy.
Will the sale of coconut oil soon be illegal in the United States?

The Diet Dictocrats told us to drop butter decades ago and switch to a so-called healthier substitute called margarine made with what they claimed would be less harmful polyunsaturated fats. Their promise was it would prevent disease. People around the globe questioned this advice, especially those who have valued butter for its life-sustaining properties for millennia. Today we know that butter is light years healthier than margarine ever could be. It's a lesson to never go against the wisdom of our ancestors and always distrust corporate and malicious propaganda designed to generate profits not health.

Can we jettison misguided and dangerous recommendations on fat and heart disease – please?
It’s not often that the mainstream media notices an academic meta-analysis, or study of studies – particularly if it goes against the tide of prevailing dietary advice. But that’s what happened with a recent Australian study, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
The BMJ paper was an update of a previous meta-analysis by the same investigators, looking at the consequences for cardiovascular health of replacing dietary saturated fats (i.e. butter) with polyunsaturated, omega-6 fatty acids (PUFAs). This time around, the group reassessed the results of the Sydney Diet Heart Study (SDHS), a randomized, controlled trial involving 458 patients that compared the rates of cardiovascular disease among subjects who increased the amount of omega-6 PUFAs – specifically, linoleic acid from safflower oil – in their diet with patients who continued their normal diet. As well as reanalyzing the results, the investigators incorporated them into their previous meta-analysis.
The SDHS results were clear: replacing dietary saturated fats with omega-6 PUFAs increased all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality and mortality from coronary heart disease.